Laini Taylor - Night of Cake & Puppets

On top of the cabinet in the back of my fathers workshop which was my grandfathers workshop and will one day be mine, if I want it there is a puppet. This is unsurprising, since its a puppet workshop. But this puppet, alone of them all, is imprisoned in a glass case, and the thing thats driven me crazy my whole life is this: The case doesnt open. It was my job to dust it when I was little, and I can tell you for a certainty: It has no door, no keyhole, no hinges. Its a solid cube, and was constructed around the puppet.

To get the puppet out or let it out, in my grandfathers words youd have to break the glass.

This has been discouraged.

Its a nasty-looking little bastard, some kind of undead fox thing in Cossack garb fur hat, leather boots. Its head is a real fox skull, plain yellowed bone, unadorned except for the eyes in its sockets, which are black glass set in leather eyelids, too realistic for comfort. Its teeth are sharpened to little knifepoints, because whoever made it apparently didnt think fox teeth weresharp enough.

Sharp enough for what? my best friend, Karou, wanted to know, the first time I brought her home to esk Krumlov with me.

What do you think? I replied with a creepy smile. It was Christmas Eve. We were fifteen, the power was out due to a storm, and my brother, Tomas, and I had led her out to the workshop with only a candle for light. I admit it freely: We were trying to freak her out.

The joke was so going to be on us.

Your grandfather didnt make it? she asked, fascinated, putting her face right up to the glass to see the puppet better. It looked even more maniacal than usual by candlelight, with the flickering reflections in its black eyes making it seem to contemplate us.

He swears not, said Tomas. He says he caught it.

Caught it, Karou repeated. And where do grandfathers catchundead fox Cossacks?

In Russia, of course.

Of course.

Its Dedas best, most terrifying, and all-time most-requested bedtime story, and thats saying something, because Deda has a lot of stories, each one absolutely true. If Im lying, may a lightning bolt slice me in two! he always declares, and no lightning bolt has yet obliged him, on top of which, for every story, he furnishes proof. Newspaper clippings, artifacts, trinkets. When we were little, Tomas and I believed devoutly that Deda himself ran from the rampaging golem in 1586 (he has a lump of petrified clay in the rough shape of a toe), hunted the witch Baba Yaga across the taiga at the behest of Catherine the Great (who presented him an Order of St. George medal for his troubles), and, yes, cornered a marauding undead fox Cossack in a Sevastopol cellar in the final days of the Crimean War. Proof of that escapade? Well, aside from the puppet itself, theres the scar tissue furling the knuckles of his left hand.

Because, yeah, thats the story. The puppetbites.

What do you mean, it bites? asked Karou.

When you put your hand in its mouth, I said, cool, it bites.

And why would you put your hand in its mouth?

Because it doesnt just bite. I dropped my voice to a whisper. It also talks, but only if you let it taste your blood. You can ask it a question, and it will answer.

Any question, said Tomas, also whispering. Hes two years older than me, and hadnt shown this much interest in hanging around with me in more than a decade. Its possible it had something to do with my stunning new best friend, who hed been following around like an assigned manservant. He said, But only one question per person per lifetime, so it better be good.

What did your grandfather ask it? Karou wanted to know, which is exactly what we wanted her to ask.

Let me just put it this way: Its in the case for a reason.

The story is elaborate and gruesome. Truly, if I ever turn out to be a murderer or something, the newspapers can pretty much say, She didnt have a chance to be normal. Her family twisted her from the day she was born. Because what bedtime stories to tell little kids! Theyre full of corpses and devils and infestations, unnatural things hatching from your breakfast eggs, and the sounds of bones splintering. I thought everyone was like this, that every family had their secret haruspex uncles, their ventriloquist Resistance fighters, their biting puppets. A normal bedtime, Deda would conclude with something like, And Baba Yaga has been hunting me ever since, and then cock his head to listen at the window. That doesnt sound like claws on the roof, does it, Podivn? Well, its probably just crows. Good night. And then hed kiss me and click out the light, leaving me to fall asleep to the imagined scrape of a child-eating witch scaling the roof.

And I wouldnt have it any other way. I mean, who would I be if Id been raised on milquetoast bedtime stories and not forced to dust the glass prison of a psychotic undead fox Cossack? I shudder to think.

I might wear lace collars and laugh flower petals and pearls. People might try to pat me. I see them think it. My height triggers the puppy-kitten reflex Must touch and Ive found that since you cant electrify yourself like a fence, the next best thing is to have murderers eyes.

The point is, I wouldnt be rabid fairy, which is Karous nickname for me, or Podivn, either, which is Dedas. Its for mucholapka podivn, or Venus flytrap, in honor of my quiet bloodthirst and patient cunning in my lifelong war with Tomas.

Anyone with an older brother can tell you: Cunning is required. Even if youre not miniature like me four foot eleven in a good mood, as little as four foot eight when in despair, which is way too often lately morphology is on the side of brothers. Theyre bigger. Their fists are heavier. Physically, we dont stand a chance. Hence the evolution of little-sister brain.

Artful, conniving, pitiless. No doubt about it, being a little sister emphasis on little has been formative, though I take pride in knowing that Tomas is more scarred by years of tangling with me than vice versa. But more than anyone or anything else, its Deda who is responsible for the landscape of my mind, the mood and scenery, the spires and shadows. When I think about kids (which isnt often, except to wish them elsewhere and stop just short of deploying them hence with my foot), the main reason I would considerbegetting any (in a theoretical sense, in the far-distant future) is so that I can practice upon small, developing brains the same degree of mind-molding my grandfather has practiced on us.

I want to terrify little kids, too! I want to build spires in their minds and dance shadows through like marionettes, chased by whispers and hints of the unspeakable.

I want to torture future generations with the Puppet That Bites.

He asked it how and when he was going to die, I told Karou.

And what did it say? She seemed freaked out, which maybe I should have questioned, because though wed only been friends for a few months and I knew next to nothing about her, it was clear she was a cool cucumber. The puppets a pretty horrible specimen, though, and the storm was loud, the candlelight pale.

The stage was set.

It opened its bare-bone jaws, I said, mustering my full theatricality, and in a voice like dead leaves blowing down an empty street, it told him, though it had no way of knowing his name, You will die, Karel NovakWHEN I KILL YOU!

At that moment, Tomas bumped the glass case so that the puppet seemed to jump, and Karou gasped, and then laughed and punched him in the arm.

You two are terrible, she said, and that should have been the end of it. That was the extent of our prank amateur hour, I see that now butKarou gasped again. She grabbed my arm. Did you see that?